Portland/Metro Fishing Report – It won’t be long before metro area trollers are working the mainstem Columbia in search of large fall Chinook now making their way upstream. Catches in the estuary are going very well right now, those fish will be upriver, in the Portland reach in under a week.
The earlier returning fish are often the larger 5-year olds, often tipping the scales into the high 20 pound class. Trollers will start working flashers and spinners or plastics to entice strikes, often trolling downstream to cover more water and cross more fish faces. Fishing will peak around the first part of September, but catches will start dramatically improving by next week.
Although it’s early for Willamette River coho salmon, counts at Willamette Falls are already underway, indicating another whopper return this year. Fishing won’t get good until the middle of September, but from what we’re seeing in the ocean and estuary fisheries, they will be robust in size…